you were a solar flare, pointed my way
by Mira-Jade
Summary: He was a young sun to her senses, and for a moment, it was glorious to blaze on in the heat of him. Gaila/Kirk, Origins


"**you were a solar flare, pointed my way"**

**Genre**: Humor, Romance  
><strong>Rating<strong>: PG  
><strong>Time Frame<strong>: Academy Days  
><strong>Characters<strong>: Gaila/Kirk, Uhura/Spock

**Summary**: He was a young sun to her senses, and for a moment, it was glorious to blaze on in the heat of him.

**Notes**: Because Jade_eyes requested it so. ;)

**Disclaimer**: Nothing is mine, but for the words.

* * *

><p>"You, my friend, are positively sickening."<p>

Next to Gaila, Nyota Uhura raised a dark brow, her countenance perfectly serene as she defended, "I have no idea what you are talking about."

"Sure you don't," Gaila made a face as she turned into her drink, a bright and fluorescent pink thing that stood out in the dim lights of the bar they sat at. At her side, Nyota had been nursing the same drink for nearly a quarter hour, and the human woman had some work to do to catch up with her Orion friend. "You just now got out of the 'look and do not touch' phase of your aspect with the Commander, and now here we are again, back at square one . . ."

Across the way, the Vulcan Commander was sitting very stiffly in a ring of humans – his fellow officers who no doubt saw the need to 'lighten up' their comrade. Gaila tried not to snort, seeing how Spock's eyes strayed across to where Nyota was sitting about once every ten seconds. Oh, if only they knew . . . And, of course, that was the only reason that Nyota agreed to come along out for an evening of dancing with her in the first place.

"While everything is technically regulation friendly between us," Nyota said slowly – for the tenth time, "the last thing I want to do is call suspicion to his earlier dealings with me. Besides, Vulcan's are very private beings – I doubt he would dance with me here even if we were fully bonded."

"Whatever you say," Gaila rolled her eyes, not understanding why her friend would choose a night of self inflicted torture rather than indulge in the veritable buffet of sentient males around them. Humming under her breath, Gaila closed her eyes, and tapped into the sensations overwhelming her from the gathered throng of people.

While she took a steady dose of pheromone suppressors in order to attend Starfleet, the drugs could do little to temper Orion physiology. And so, while she was relatively harmless to those around her, she could still _feel_, and make her selections accordingly.

The men – and women, even – around her were a grid of colors to her senses. Before she had managed to escape, in the brothel that had owned her, she had been taught how to translate those colors, and manipulate them accordingly. But, she had left that life far behind, choosing instead to work for her mind rather than being worked over for her body, and she had little to regret in her decision. She chose what colors she indulged in, and not the other way around.

Across the way, there were a group of cadets spying out the various woman around them. The young men varied – greens and yellows and pale blues, all bright and fun and fast – fleeting interests that would fade upon the morning hour. There was a young man in that group who had a gray overcast to him, warping his mind as he stuck to the shadows, and Gaila felt her skin crawl at the feel of him against her senses. There were a few older officers, steel blue to her senses, who were there to keep a quiet eye and a stiff drink with their peers, and the interest there was of the sort that she'd have to work to earn. So she looked away.

At a table in the corner, there was a young couple who sat chatting, and around them, the orange bands of new feelings – budding love – rose around them like candle flames, something soft that warmed Gaila's senses and psyche to be around, but was not hers to touch. Even further into the dining tables, there was a more mature couple, the bands around them a red so dark that it was almost a violet – that was an old and sincere bond, the type of which her mind hummed to touch.

At her side, Nyota was coated in flames of crimson – a deep and intense attachment that was normally a balm to her senses to be around. But right now the crimson was crackling, uneasy as the distance between her and the Commander – who also blazed crimson, but a silvered shade of it, which was no doubt a shadow of the mental bond they shared – stifled the flow of them. Gaila rubbed at her temples at that, remembering the years of Nyota's jumbled pheromones before she actually decided to _do something _about her feelings for the Vulcan. Those years as Nyota's roommate had been murder for her.

Gaila took another sip of her drink, stretching out with her senses, and feeling interest – some muted, and some blatant, and sorted between the strands for one that would suit her the best for that night. While humans may have thought her promiscuous, her selections were actually healthy for her make-up – her people were not monogamous, by far, and those bonds she chose were what kept her going with the pheromone suppressors she took in order to function amongst other sentient races.

She felt one strand – yellow and gold and vibrant, like a small sun to her senses, and grinned a shark's grin upon feeling it so. Ah. A perfect match.

She concentrated on the strand, and followed it to . . .

The rather delicious cadet who was trying to talk Nyota into giving up her first name.

Gaila raised a brow at the young man's attempts to flirt, even when Nyota's eyes were threatening bodily harm, and her every color to Gaila's senses blazed in annoyance.

"Magorie, Maggie, Matilda - "

"Do you even think before you spit out these names?" Nyota scathed.

"Matilda it is, then!"

Nyota gave a long suffering sigh, and looked up at the same time Gaila did – for across the way, Spock had gone from a warm shade of red to a rather turbulent shade of it in her senses. No doubt Nyota felt so through their bond, and Gaila tensed, knowing how strictly monogamous Vulcan's were. The man didn't know how seriously he was treading the line of a broken nose – or a sore shoulder from a Vulcan pinch – no matter how famed their logical self control was.

It looked like it was time for her to slip in, then.

"_Her_ name is not-interested," Gaila slid in between Nyota and the cadet. "But _my_name is Gaila, and you look like just the man to buy me a drink."

Gaila didn't like to think that all men were so easy, but experience had taught her otherwise – the man's eyes slid away from Nyota, to her, and then back again. And then he did a double take.

Everyone knew about Orion girls, and she could see the stories float across his eyes as the white light of him brightened to her senses. He was a solar flare to her in that moment, and she longed to bask in the heat of him. Oh yes, a part of her purred, quite the match he was for her. Almost perfectly so . . .

"See Uhura," he said, even as his eyes had yet to break from Gaila's. "It's not so hard to share names, you see?"

Nyota rolled her eyes, and touched her friend on the shoulder. "He's all yours, Gaila." Nyota put her empty glass down on the bar, and then moved to where Spock was also moving to the exit, and oh, but Gaila wished she could be a fly on the wall for the rest of _their _night.

But alas . . .

"And that was an invitation, I can assure you," the man smiled, all teeth – white and charming, and once Gaila blinked back the force of his presence against her psyche, she took the moment to look at him – truly _look at him_. He was trim and lean, muscled as all of Starfleet's officers were mandated to be. But his eyes were a shade of blue that looked like sunlight through a sapphire, and his features were that classically handsome kind that would make Adonis weep.

Oh yes, she thought, as she moved closer, following his eyes as they swept over the red fall of her hair and over the bare expanse of green skin . . . He would do nicely.

"And to whom am I being so inviting?" she asked, her voice low and sensual, and even without the pull of her pheromones, she watched as it worked like a drug on him.

"Kirk," he gave her the name like a smirk, his voice all promises and legends waiting to be written anew. "James T. Kirk, at your service."


End file.
